means A short, sharp signal or message sent to test whether something is present, awake, or reachable — and to get a quick response back.

from Pure onomatopoeia: 'ping' was coined in the 19th century to imitate the high, ringing sound of a bullet striking metal or a small bell. The computing sense was deliberately borrowed in 1983, when programmer Mike Muuss wrote a network utility to test connections — he named it after sonar, where a ship sends out a sound pulse ('ping') and listens for the echo bouncing back off another object. So today's 'ping me' carries, faintly, the memory of a submarine listening in the dark.